THE INTOLERANT BRITON 197 



of the best of horsemen, sportsmen, and critics, known to 

 us all as " Rapier," of the Sporting and Dramatic News, 

 Alfred E. T. Watson may his shadow never grow less ! 

 remarks that "an Englishman's highest ambition, apart 

 from success in sport between the flags, is to ride straight 

 to hounds in the manner which, causing no unnecessary 

 exertion to himself or horse, enables horse and man to 

 last the longest without fatigue." " The Englishman has 

 no sort of desire to practise the < high airs ' of the school. 

 To him it seems an utter waste of time to induce a horse 

 to piaffer, execute the Spanish trot, or perform other 

 feats of school training. If he can make his horse lead 

 off with either leg as he may indicate, and perhaps swing 

 his croup as well as his fore-hand, the animal is looked on 

 as possessing a superfluity of accomplishments." 



These two statements cover the entire case. It is true 

 that the Englishman is unapproachable in his own prov- 

 ince; it is also true that he despises the high-school, and 

 that he doesn't know a saddle-horse as we know him in 

 the Southern States. I have interlarded so many observa- 

 tions on the English method in my chat about our own 

 ways, that there is scarce a word left to be said. I can- 

 not overstate my unswerving fealty to the Briton's horse- 

 manship as above construed, any more than I could over- 

 state my affection for his frank and manly, if often 

 brusque and pushing, habit the wide world over. Why 

 should he not, if he chooses so to do, plume himself on 

 owning, if not, as we are said to do, on beating all creation? 

 It is a refreshing thing to see and hear him assert it. If we 

 fondly imagine we know better, and inwardly chuckle at 

 his unconscious intolerance along the highways and by- 

 ways of life, it does him no harm ; and surely we, too, are 

 chips of the old block. British narrowness has wrought 

 great things as narrowness has everywhere. Antislavery 



